David Bowie RIP

[Mary Chambers]

Funny how people's opinion varies about what constitutes ignorance.

[Beef Oven!]

Funny how people's opinion varies about what constitutes ignorance.

How do you mean?

[MrGongGong]

Funny how people's opinion varies about what constitutes ignorance.

Indeed
It's not compulsory to know about all musics or even like them but I do find it odd that some folks (and i'm not referring to you, Mary) who express outrage that youngsters don't know the answers to questions about classical music on University Challenge seem to be completely unaware of the music listened by millions of people.

[Tapiola]

Indeed
It's not compulsory to know about all musics or even like them but I do find it odd that some folks ... who express outrage that youngsters don't know the answers to questions about classical music on University Challenge seem to be completely unaware of the music listened by millions of people.

[Beef Oven!]

Indeed
It's not compulsory to know about all musics or even like them but I do find it odd that some folks (and i'm not referring to you, Mary) who express outrage that youngsters don't know the answers to questions about classical music on University Challenge seem to be completely unaware of the music listened by millions of people.

[Conchis]

Indeed
It's not compulsory to know about all musics or even like them but I do find it odd that some folks (and i'm not referring to you, Mary) who express outrage that youngsters don't know the answers to questions about classical music on University Challenge seem to be completely unaware of the music listened by millions of people.

I've never knowingly heard any of Kanye West's music but I'd willingly pay a small sum of money so I could NOT know who he is.

Back on Bowie....I've been reading some of his mid-seventies comments on the desirability of a Britain having a far-right government. This was the interview in which he described Hitler as 'the first rock star....when you think about it, he staged a whole country.' It was in the same timeframe that Bowie was photographed giving what looked like the Nazi salute to some fans at Victoria station.

Now, I don't believe that Bowie was ever seriously what we'd recognise as 'right wing' (though he may well, as a high earner, have voted Tory in 1979), so I'm guessing that he was 'thinking aloud' in this interview, examining his developing thoughts while an journalist was in the room. Not a good idea then and an even worse one now....if any comparable rock star (not that there are many such beasts) today had said anything like that, they would be tarred and feathered by the media (as witnessed what happened to Morrissey when he made some rather innocuous remarks about race in 2002).

[Tapiola]

I've never knowingly heard any of Kanye West's music but I'd willingly pay a small sum of money so I could NOT know who he is.

I think Kanye's music is an incidental sideline to his main job as professional 3rsehole.

[P. G. Tipps]

Indeed
It's not compulsory to know about all musics or even like them but I do find it odd that some folks (and i'm not referring to you, Mary) who express outrage that youngsters don't know the answers to questions about classical music on University Challenge seem to be completely unaware of the music listened by millions of people.

Millions of people read the Sun, the Mirror & the Daily Mail.

A few others read the Financial Times. It doesn't mean those few others are 'unaware' of the tabloids its just that, rightly or wrongly, their standards and tastes are on a rather more thoughtful level, so why waste valuable time reading the tabloids? Music is no different.

People are entitled to choose for themselves but don't try and pretend everything must be equal and have the same value when, quite clearly, they don't!

[MrGongGong]

Music is no different.

Yes it is (and that's a really sh*te comparison)

[P. G. Tipps]

Yes it is (and that's a really sh*te comparison)

Oh no it's not! (and that's a really predictable response!)

[Tapiola]

"If you can ... walk with kings, nor lose the common touch..."

[Richard Barrett]

Hello again.

I don't really care too much about self-reinvention, image-creation, stardom, hero-worship and the rest of it. Not do I care much about whether music is classified as "pop" or "classical" or whatever, or how many or how few people listen to this music or that.

Music for me is about sound, about the unity of emotion and intelligence, about form, about pushing envelopes, about indelible experiences, about astonishment, about discovering unsuspected beauties of shared humanity through originality, and many other things but those will do for now. In all of these areas David Bowie's music is a pinnacle as far as I'm concerned, and it has been for more than forty years, and no doubt it always will be.

Last autumn, for some reason, after my interest in his work had been rekindling for a year or two, I felt impelled to listen through his entire recorded output, and it seemed to me that very few bodies of artistic work are on a comparable level of achievement. There are maybe three albums out of almost thirty that contain nothing I would want to revisit, and others I know every corner of and will never get to the bottom of however many times I might explore them.

[ahinton]

Hello again.

I don't really care too much about self-reinvention, image-creation, stardom, hero-worship and the rest of it. Not do I care much about whether music is classified as "pop" or "classical" or whatever, or how many or how few people listen to this music or that.

Music for me is about sound, about the unity of emotion and intelligence, about form, about pushing envelopes, about indelible experiences, about astonishment, about discovering unsuspected beauties of shared humanity through originality, and many other things but those will do for now. In all of these areas David Bowie's music is a pinnacle as far as I'm concerned, and it has been for more than forty years, and no doubt it always will be.

Last autumn, for some reason, after my interest in his work had been rekindling for a year or two, I felt impelled to listen through his entire recorded output, and it seemed to me that very few bodies of artistic work are on a comparable level of achievement. There are maybe three albums out of almost thirty that contain nothing I would want to revisit, and others I know every corner of and will never get to the bottom of however many times I might explore them.

Welcome back - and thanks for what you write here.

[Anna]

Hello again.

Hello again to you too, hope you'll stay for a while. Thanks also for what you've written.

[teamsaint]

Good to see you back here Richard.
Yes,he just made a large number of great and interesting records.

( listened to Bring me the Disco King again today. Sheer class.)